Awaiting economic signals: Their meaning could guide state budget allocations

10:09 PM,
Mar. 17, 2013

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Pundits fill Internet sites, the airwaves and pages of print forecasting what economic signs, such as the federal sequester or last week's record-setting stock market, might mean, but it matters little.

"It's not so much what the economic signs might indicate," Larry DeBoer, a Purdue University Extension economist, said as he discussed first-quarter revenue predictions for Indiana. "It's what the five-person forecast team thinks those signs mean."

The report, due out next month, might mean the difference between how much of a spending increase education gets and whether taxpayers ...